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78 changes: 78 additions & 0 deletions active/marketing.md
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# Marketing Working Group

## Scope of responsibilities

The working group is responsible for planning and execution of marketing activities, and for advising the DSF Board on strategic decisions related to marketing. The goal of those marketing activities is to:
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Suggested change
The working group is responsible for planning and execution of marketing activities, and for advising the DSF Board on strategic decisions related to marketing. The goal of those marketing activities is to:
The working group is responsible for:
* Planning and execution of marketing activities
* Proposing new strategies for marketing activities
* Advising the DSF Board on strategic decisions related to marketing and strategic communication
The goals of those marketing activities are:

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I don't think I captured it perfectly above, but I wanted the 3 points above to convey:

  • (responsible+mandate for implementing marketing strategies approved by DSF board)
  • (responsible for proposing NEW marketing strategies that DSF board approves)
  • (advising DSF on marketing and strategic communication)

We could also try to define a bit more what a "marketing activity" vs a "marketing strategy" is. I guess no one is really confused, so maybe that would just be fluff 🤷

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@benjaoming benjaoming Nov 26, 2025

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I tried to squeeze in something about "strategic communication"... I dunno, but to sort of counter-balance the mindset of commercial marketing? This can maybe lead to some discussions about "quality over quantity" in the KPIs that the marketing would orient towards.

We're asking ourselves really deep questions about what the Django brand is, why it's a trusth-worthy technology and community, and what sort of messaging and activities can keep us there on the long term. At the end of the day, most activities are a sort of marketing, whether that's intentional or not 🙂

Example: Blog posts (without any sense of marketing messages nor intentions) from the Steering Council about Django's future are actually great marketing 😄


- Promote Django: to increase awareness, understanding, and adoption of the framework. And beyond the framework, to strengthen the public narrative about the project, its community, and the Django Software Foundation.
- Ensure that Django is represented clearly and positively across all channels that are relevant to our audiences (such as developers, organisations, educators, open source contributors, etc).
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Suggested change
- Ensure that Django is represented clearly and positively across all channels that are relevant to our audiences (such as developers, organisations, educators, open source contributors, etc).
- Ensure that Django is represented clearly and positively across all channels that are relevant to our audiences (such as developers, organisations, educators, open source contributors, etc).
- Increasing strategic coherence of activities across our communication channels


The group maintains key components of Django’s marketing strategy in accordance with guidance from the Board and Steering Council, and executes on that strategy autonomously. This includes maintaining:

- The overall marketing strategy for Django and the DSF.
- A website content strategy, including an editorial line for the blog.
- Brand guidelines for Django and the DSF
- KPIs aligned with objectives of the DSF

Delegated responsibilities for the group to work on autonomously:

- Management of the “www” djangoproject.com website content, in particular the Django blog and other content pages, excluding fundraising pages.
- Management of one-off campaign sites like the [20th birthday site](https://birthday20.djangoproject.com/).

Delegated responsibilities for the group to work on with others:

- Management of fundraising pages on [djangoproject.com](http://djangoproject.com), in collaboration with the fundraising WG.
- Contributions of marketing content to the “docs” [djangoproject.com](http://djangoproject.com) website content, in collaboration with Django core contributors.
- Publication of new content across Django online community and social media channels, in collaboration with the Online Community WG and Social media WG.
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Is there a chance we would want to have the social media WG absorbed/disbanded once the marketing WG was in place? Unlike website and online community, it feels like social media is ~entirely a subset of marketing.

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I think it's better to have individual sub-WGs with clear-cut work. So the Social Media working group would continue, but with a more well-defined task thanks to the parent Marketing WG.

I don't mind that Marketing WG makes its own executive calls on Social Media posts.

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Yep we have discussed this heaps. In the end I feel like there’s plenty enough to do, that we could use 5-10 volunteers focused on social media, and 10 or so on other marketing activities. It felt to me like smaller groups would work better than one big one.

Day to day, I’d hope lots of discussions are held as one big group with everyone involved in this space rather than siloed per group. It’d largely just be the "execution" that is kept separate.

- Creation of physical and digital marketing collateral for Django events, and Django’s presence at events, in collaboration with the Events Support WG.

## Initial membership

- Chair: TBC
- Co-Chair: TBC
- Board Liaison (must be an active Board member; may be the same as Chair/Co-Chair): TBC
- Steering Council Liaison: TBC
- Other members:
- Raffaella Suardini

## Future membership

We welcome everyone with an interest in marketing, and an understanding of the \[mission of the Django Software Foundation]. We select relevant volunteers based on our understanding of gaps in the group’s expertise.

## ### How do people who want to join sign up / volunteer / express interest?

To apply to join the group, fill our \[marketing working group application form].

## ### How will decisions on adding/removing members be handled?

Direct membership: new members may self-nominate; the WG will vote (50%+1) to approve/deny new members. The WG will vote for New Chair/Co-Chairs and decision to appoint will be based on gaining majority votes.

Members join the group for one year term. At the end of this term, they need to opt into staying involved to keep being a member of the group.

Members can be removed from the group with a 50%+1 vote from other members.

### Access granting and deployment

New members join the group with no access to the website’s content publishing functionality. After 6 months of onboarding, they can request publishing access to the Chair and Co-Chair, who decide whether the onboarding is completed, and if so liaise with the \[ops team] to manage permissions.

For content managed via hard-coded templates within the website repository, contributions are made via the standard pull request process. Content changes are reviewed by other group members, with a final quality check by the \[website WG] before merging.

## Budget

No allocated budget. The group will likely request a budget to hire external marketing experts in the future.
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May be helpful to also include tools as a possible expenditure. I'm thinking something like figma

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I expect this will be a must, but I’m a bit hesitant to define this in the initial charter as people on the group might have opinions?

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@tim-schilling tim-schilling Nov 19, 2025

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I don't think it should call out Figma, but it can call out that the WG can spend money on tools. Or that this can be revisited on a as needed basis.

The no allocated budget line with an exception for hiring a consultant reads that there's no budget without a governance change. I guess I'm suggesting it be flexible.


## Communications

1. Group-only private channel in the DSF slack
2. Shared #marketing public channel for all DSF slack members
3. TBC: shared channel with fundraising and website WG members
4. TBC: Channels to be identified on the Django Forum and Discord server
5. Private group mailing list for internal communications only

## Reporting

We post public meeting notes to the forum, with private information (such as in-progress partnerships) left out. The DSF Board and Steering Council have access to the group’s full private meeting notes.

For campaigns, we share a tracker with all DSF volunteers.

The team produces an annual report that is shared publicly with the Django community.